Hey dude, active dude army officer. Dip was and is a lifeline during some brutally long hours in the woods under a ruck and fighting load. I get truly get it, you view it as a means to a more important end. That approach killed my quit 2x at the military academy I went to for college, and I'd say about 4x until now during my active duty career.
However that's bullshit. If we're doing science here as you seem to be, and you care about performance, the detrimental effects to blood flow and performance make the trade off of "staying awake" instead of. "quitting dipping" a dumb decision. If you're truly a professional athlete, I'd gander you can stay awake for a 4 hour baseball game w/o dip if I can do an 10 hour patrol without it. As far as the performance during withdrawal, I do PT twice a day, I've felt like shit for a week during workouts but it's stopped so that's your time frame you'd be looking at.
Secondly, I've tried the nicotine gum about 4 times for I'd say a total of about 20 months. You may be different, but i just got addicted to it. I said I needed it "for my job, for this field exercise, for this..." and I just fucking plowed right through it (which is not how it's supposed to be used). And eventually, I'd have (big training exercise whatever, you'll have championship game whatever) and be like ok I've been good about dip, I'll drop off the wagon buy a few logs, if I haven't dipped in 5 months, this is ok. It's just a cycle and cycle and cycle.
All in all, That white patch will prob go away, most of the time it's not cancer. I dipped for 9 years since I was 17-ish and briefly stopped early on for a similar reason. And you will prob start dipping again because it goes away and you still have the nicotine in your system from the gum. But, you've caught the quitting bug, enjoy ccycling through it for a very long time if you're taking the nicorette approach. I can say that with certainty bc you and I both had similar approaches and reasons for dipping, which, unwrapped, is reaosns for nicotine.
Overall, I'm about to be Day 7 here, and have proceed further in this process than I ever did over like 18 months and some serious $ of fucking nicorette. I encourage you to consider that dude
